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How To Shoot Tethered Video With Your Canon DSLR And Android Tablet

By Marc Schultz | 14-July-2015

I have written a series of articles here on this blog about how to shoot tethered with your Canon DSLR camera and an Android tablet using an app called DSLR Controller. In this very short blog post I am going to show you how you can also use the same app to just as easily use your tablet as an external monitor when shooting video, plus offer you the ability to start and stop video recording remotely from your tablet as well.

Shooting tethered video with the DSLR Controller app is very simple. You use it in just the same way as you would as if you were shooting still photos with your Canon DSLR camera. If you would like to know more of the basics of how the DSLR Controller app works and how to connect it to your Canon DSLR camera then at the end of this blog post you will find a list of links to all my previous articles which cover all that. The difference though when shooting video versus stills with DSLR Controller it that when you go into Live View mode on your Canon DSLR a new button appears in the DSLR Controller app window on your Android device’s screen. It is a red button, which can be used to start and stop video recording by pressing it. Otherwise, everything else is the same in terms of the app as when using it to shoot still photos. You can see below in the attached screen shot where the red button for shooting video is as I have outlined it in green with an arrow pointing to it:

If you are wondering if there are any disadvantages to using a tablet as an external video monitor instead of a traditional LCD monitor plugged into the HDMI port on your Canon DSLR camera, then the answer is yes and no.

When tethering video shooting to the tablet it will be running over a USB 2.0 cable and this means that the transfer speed of the video from the camera’s sensor to the tablet won’t be in exact real time and there will be a slight lag/delay because USB 2.0 speeds aren’t fast enough to render the video on the tablet screen instantaneously. But the delay is only slight and much better than using the small preview screen on the back of the camera itself.

Of course if you use an external monitor running over an HDMI signal then there won’t be any delay of what you see on the external screen, but an external monitor is bulkier, an added expense, and less portable than a small tablet if you already own one. You don’t even have to use a tablet if you want to keep things to a minuimum in terns of size and weight. You could use your Android Smartphone or Phablet instead if you want to and this makes your kit even smaller and more portable.

Here are the list of articles I wrote in the past about tethered shooting with a tablet:

If you have any questions about shooting tethered video with your android tablet then please feel free to post them below as always. Also, if you would like to see a bigger screen shot of the DSLR Controller app screen shooting video with the Ferrari then you can click here.

Thanks a lot for this post. It’s really helpful. Also, is there any android resolution simulation app out there that one can get for proper focusing assistance? This is what I mean- my tablet is 1280×800 screen resolution. It can go a long way assisting with 1920×1080 resolution video monitoring for focus but it won’t be WYSIWYG because of the extra pixels. If there’s an app that allows display of simulated resolution, I’ll be pleased to know about it. Thanks

That depends on your needs. Size requirements also. Almost all new Android tablets will work. I prefer either an 8.4″ or 10.5″ tablet from Samsung. Their “S” series at the moment is very good. There is also a new Samsung “S2” series coming out that was announced last month. But I heard battery capacity will be decreased on the forthcoming S2 series.